Dead Of Night
by xXBalorBabeXx
Summary: She had brought him home to meet the family... but neither knew just how crazy things would turn out.
1. Not Just A Straggler

_**11/27/04, Cena household…**_

 _The noise downstairs was getting too loud for her to ignore, Amanda pulling herself up and swinging her legs over the left side of her grey and green queen sized bed._

 _Yawning slightly and rubbing her tired hazel eyes, she stood up and stretched her arms before slipping her tiny feet into her grey fuzzy slippers and heading downstairs._

" _I'm telling you, something strange is outside!" Dan yelled._

" _Shh, you'll wake them up!" Sean whispered… but both brothers heard footsteps at the staircase._

" _You already did… well, one of us."_

 _The two turned, seeing their 14 year old sister in her pajamas with her collarbone length hair in a bedhead texture._

" _Why do you have Dad's shotgun, Dan?" Amanda asked with a sleepy yawn._

" _There's something strange outside, kiddo." Dan said, Amanda looking to the windows… but all she saw was the late autumn frost on them._

 _When she walked over with a towel and wiped the window clean, she saw a strange light… but it disappeared as her brothers reached the window._

" _Alright, back upstairs." Sean said, taking Amanda back to her room and helping her lie down after she took her slippers off._

 _Amanda's eyes closed after her head hit the pillow, Sean kissing her on her forehead after pulling the covers over her._

" _Sweet dreams, kiddo." Sean whispered, heading downstairs after pulling Amanda's bedroom door to a close._

" _I wonder what she saw out there, Sean…" Dan said._

" _If she saw anything, it was most likely the neighbor's watch lights. Now let's just crash." Sean said, heading back up to his old room._

 _Dan put the gun's safety back on and put it away in the safe, locking it… but he knew that his teenage sister saw something…_

 **12 years later...**

"Okay, why did you drag me all the way out here again?" Amanda asked as she and Finn stopped in the field not too far from the Cena house, the light from the moon in the darkened sky surrounding them on the chilly November night.

"Being honest, I was freaked out about meeting your family… your mom's a kind hearted woman but your dad was starting to scare me with that shotgun on the table." Finn answered.

"I'm sorry… I keep telling him not to threaten the people in my life with it." Amanda said as their hands entwined with each others. "I don't think I'll ever understand why a father feels the need to aim a shotgun whenever his daughter brings a guy home."

"Something about being the figure in her life, I suppose… I'll probably understand it one day." Finn replied.

"One day…" Amanda said before the two kissed… and were startled by the blinding light even though it was a good distance away. "Oh damn, I think the neighbors horse got out of her gate again." She said before the two found one of the ATVs and turned the light and engine on.

"Has that happened before?" Finn asked as they climbed on.

"No, Bella's normally behaved at night… now you might want to hold on tight, I haven't driven one of these since I was 14." Amanda answered, Finn putting his arms around her before she up the ATV and the two were speeding off.

But when they reached the farmhouse, it wasn't Bella… leaned against the railing was a man who made Amanda's older brothers look like they were child sized because of his imposing stature.

"Sir, are you alright?" Amanda asked as she and Finn got off the ATV and walked over, the man seeing them once his vision cleared up.

"I don't know, ma'am… where am I?" The man said, a bit shaky as though he was coming down from an adrenaline rush.

"West Newbury, Massachusetts…" Amanda answered.

"Massa… damn… that's a long way." The man said, in a quieter tone towards the end.

"From where? And why are you out here?" Finn asked as he and Amanda helped the man sit down, neither of the three truly phased by the light sprinkle of snow on the grass.

"From Europe, sir… I was in Iraq…" The man answered, pulling one side of his jacket aside to show a military name patch and Air Force wings, the patch reading _'L. Khranitel_.'

"That is a long way…" Amanda says as the man pulled himself back up, not wanting to use them to balance himself as he easily dwarfed both of them in size.

"Yeah… I was flying and then there was a bang… then it's all blurred and suddenly, there you two are… Name's Logan, by the way." The man said.

"Nice to meet you… I'm Amanda, he's Finn." Amanda says as she and Logan carefully shook hands.

"Gotta be careful with someone like you or your wrist will break." Logan joked once they let go of each other's hands.

"I get that a lot, especially from my coworkers." Amanda said with a slight laugh as she started to wish that they hadn't just taken the ATV as Logan clearly needed medical help.

"Well you're in the same as Balor here, right? One of the guys I serve with… he's obsessed with the lot of you." Logan said.

"Not all that surprising, the company used to go overseas for the Tribute To The Troops events." Amanda says as she looked around, trying to remember where she last left it. "Hah!" She said, lifting up a fake rock and finding the key to an old van that John had taught her how to drive one summer.

When they found it, they had taken off to the nearest hospital… while waiting, Amanda heard her phone ring and answered it.

"Hey. Sorry about taking off like that." Amanda answered, knowing that John was wondering where they were.

"Where the hell did you two sneak off to?" John asked.

"Out for a bit to talk… but then we found someone beaten up pretty badly." Amanda answered as she glanced at Logan.

"You're lucky they found you when they did. Another few hours, you would've been a damn icicle." The nurse said, Logan glancing at her.

"Is there a snowstorm heading in tonight?" Logan asked.

"Supposed to be the worst one in nearly two decades… my former sister in law knows this area like the back of her hand." The nurse answered, Logan realising that the nurse was talking about Amanda.

"Oh, right… well… I'll just have to be in a warm spot when it hits then." Logan said, looking out of the window. "Haven't got many places to go, really… I'm not supposed to be here."

Amanda couldn't help but think that she had seen Logan before…


	2. What You Don't Think Of

_**11/28/04…**_

 _John didn't need to hear for long to know that the high pitched painful scream belonged to Amanda and ran to the backyard, Amanda curled on her left side onto the freezing ground and John crouching down to her._

" _Mandy, what happened?!" John asked, helping her sit up._

" _I saw someone out here… but when I went to go check on them, I slipped out the window…" Amanda answered, the 14 year old feeling embarrassed more than anything… she tried to move her left arm but John stopped her, seeing how it was bent. "It's a really bad sign if I can't feel my fingers, right?" She asked as John helped her up… and through the dense fog, he saw a tall figure._

" _What the hell?" John muttered._

" _Uh, John? Please reset my arm." Amanda said, John snapping out of it and turning back to her._

" _Yeah, sure… brace for it, kiddo." John said, looking over the arm and getting a good position in both of his hands before quickly bending and twisting it back into the right position._

 _Amanda suppressed a scream and closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths before opening her eyes as John helped her to the Charger._

 _At the ER, Elizabeth had just started her shift when she saw her boyfriend and his little sister walk in and ran over to them._

" _Damn it, what happened?!" Elizabeth asked as she examined Amanda's arm once they were in a trauma room._

" _Said she fell outside… but I saw someone nearby, I'm convinced he pulled her out the window." John explained._

" _John, my arm would've been ripped off if that had happened." Amanda says._

" _Suppose so… he did look like a pretty big guy, I'd almost say we're the next in the line of Bigfoot sightings." John said._

" _Yeah…" Amanda responded, trying not to scream when sharp stabbing pains attacked her ribcage._

" _Damn, I think she might've broke a few ribs. I'll go call the x-ray techs, see if the room's busy." Elizabeth said before leaving._

" _When Mom and Dad hear about this one, I'm grounded." Amanda says quietly as John braced a hand on her back before his phone rang and he looked at it before letting it go to voicemail. "Right, Randy's gotta be going stir crazy." She said, remembering that their friend tended to call them a lot throughout the holiday season._

" _He can handle a few hours by himself." John responded, carefully hugging Amanda…_

 **Present time…**

Amanda was half asleep when she felt the familiar leather jacket placed onto her, looked up and saw Finn.

"Gonna be a cold night." Finn said, quiet as Logan had fallen into sleep, albeit not a very comfortable looking one.

"The snow outside is already up to people's knees, I take it…" Amanda whispered as she looked at Logan. "Remember when I told you how I fell out of my bedroom window?"

"Yeah… first time you broke a limb." Finn replied.

"Well second but that's another story…" Amanda said, evoking a slight chuckle from Finn. "I think it was Logan out there that afternoon and the night before the accident. He could've set off a flare gun to get someone's attention." She says as she sat up and leaned against Finn after he sat down.

"Well he's forces… might've been in a training exercise." Finn said, their hands entwining together once they were close enough.

"Something could've caused him to get separated from the others, he might've not recognised the area…" Amanda whispered before Logan stirred around but his eyes stayed closed as he talked in his sleep, cringing slightly from the memory he was reliving and the painful scream.

"Slow it down, you're gonna…" Logan muttered in his sleep, before jolting with a sharp breath, then rubbing his eyes and cursing under his breath as he'd woken up halfway.

"Hey, it's alright… I've had nightmares myself." Amanda said, trying to reassure him… but her left arm stuck out when she reached over and he saw the faded scars of where it had been broken.

"Have I got my legs?" Logan asked, still only half awake and aware.

"Yeah, they're still there…" Amanda answered, thinking that Logan had woken up from a night terror caused by PTSD.

"Good… look at the right one." Logan said, kicking the blanket up a bit and Amanda seeing numerous scars all over the leg, which also looked a bit thinner than the left one. "Crushed like a glove of garlic, it was… car crash out in the desert, the truck just collapsed in on us… not surprising, considering it was a tank we hit."

Amanda tried to blink off the shock, Logan lightly rubbing her right shoulder.

"You're awfully young looking, how old are you?" Logan asked.

"26…" Amanda answered.

"Nah… I'm just old." Logan said, resting his head back on the pillows. "Been through enough to be."

"Age sneaks up on us at some point…" Amanda said, Logan seeing the scar on the palm of her left hand. "I was messed up for a while… did a lot of things I wish I hadn't done."

"We all do that sometimes… I know I have quite a few times." Logan said.

Amanda heard her phone chime, seeing that she was just now getting a text that was sent to her two hours ago from her mother, Carol.

' _Sweetheart, where are you?'_

' _At the hospital… someone got hurt badly, we helped him here.'_ Amanda replied. "Typical nor'easter, knocked out some of the phone towers." She said quietly.

"If it's just started, it ain't safe to drive back home… you two might be here for a while." Logan said.

Out where the elevator was, John and Dan had reached the floor and brushed the snow off themselves.

"I told you to let me drive!" Dan said angrily.

"For the last time, I didn't see that patch of ice! And you shouldn't talk about terrible driving with how you nearly crashed Dad's van with Mandy in the passenger seat when she was five." John answered.

"Here they go again…" Amanda muttered as she shook her head, Finn resting his right hand on her back.

"They'll never learn… that's just guys and their mates for you." Logan said.

"My brothers are crazy when they're mad!" Amanda says before heading out into the hall with Finn's jacket still on her. "This is a hospital, not home, you two!" She said before hugging both of them and Dan seeing a bite scar on her neck and right shoulder.

"Right back at you." Dan replied as he and Amanda let go.

"How's-" John started to ask.

"Beaten up but he'll live… said he crashed his plane nearby." Amanda answered.

"We could look for it if you want, when the snow cuts off." Dan said.

"Who knows what kind of shape it's in and don't think I don't see you glaring at Finn!" Amanda replied, lightly smacking Dan's right arm.

"I think if they don't let up, you and her might end up running off to get married." Logan said quietly.

"Mandy and I tried to keep as quiet as possible for a while… the last serious relationship she was in, the guy broke her heart pretty badly." Finn answered.

"Yeah… I've seen that happen to one of my old friends, and that ended really badly." Logan said.

Amanda walked back in after a bit, seeing that the snow wasn't letting up anytime soon as she looked out the window… and jumped back when a truck crashed through a wooden fence.

"Well damn, they say no driving like maniacs out there!" Logan says.

"I nearly flipped my old ATV over once during a snowstorm… but after I got control of it again, I crashed it right into the ravine." Amanda said after turning back to them...

 _ **2/5/05…**_

 _Amanda pulled herself back onto the worn down bridge and crossed it back onto the solid ground, tears once again in her eyes from the argument she had went through with Sean… she didn't remember what it was about now and limped towards the road._

 _It was a while before she reached the house… when the door was pushed open, 29 year old Sean had his fingers on the 9 and 1 buttons on the phone before he dropped it and ran to Amanda, helping her sit down._

" _How long have I've been gone?" Amanda asked, having lost track of time as Sean wrapped a blanket around her._

" _Five hours… you stormed out at around noon…" Sean answered, seeing a wound in Amanda's left leg._

" _I can't feel my legs…" Amanda managed to say as her leg was patched up, the wound not being too deep but both hearing military sirens in the distance. "Damn it!" She cursed under her breath, Sean lightly swatting her unharmed right leg._

" _Watch your mouth!" Sean warned before going to the door._

" _We got a call about an injured civilian not too far from the base, is anyone hurt in there?!" One of the soldiers asked._

" _My little sister cut her left leg open, not sure on what though…" Sean answered, one of the soldiers heading back to the car and gripping the CB radio._

" _Corporal, is the medical team ready back on the base?"_

" _What kind of injuries are we looking at here, Lieutenant Sanders?" Logan asked._

" _Laceration on the leg, fairly noticeable blood loss, possible hyperthermia." Sanders replied._

" _Damn… hold on, one of the other corporals found blood on the old bridge and a burnt out ATV." Logan said, relaying the last bit of info._

" _These crazy kids are gonna get themselves killed!" Sanders muttered as Sean walked out with a pale Amanda in his arms._

" _Whatever we were fighting about… I'm sorry." Amanda whispered, Sean kissing her on her forehead._

" _I'll explain it all when you're better, kiddo." Sean said quietly…_


	3. Younger Years

**Present time…**

"Whenever I got pissed, I used to go out on joyrides to clear my mind." Amanda said after she finished explaining.

"Not such a good idea when you're not focused enough to control the vehicle though." Logan said.

"Yeah. I've driven across that field before, I just misjudged it that day." Amanda says after a few seconds as she glanced at her brothers out in the hallway… they had stopped arguing but Dan had started talking to Finn and Logan saw Amanda tense up. "I feel like that teenager who brought her first boyfriend home to meet the family." She muttered, Logan lightly patting her shoulder.

Out in the hallway, Dan reached a payphone and put a quarter in before dialing his mother's number.

"Is everything okay?" Carol asked.

"The guy's beaten up but he'll be alright…" Dan answered, Carol knowing that tone.

"Were you trying to scare off your sister's boyfriend?" Carol asked.

"Ma!" Dan answered, now embarrassed that she knew that without him admitting or denying it.

"He's a fine gentleman, you leave them to it." Carol said.

"Alright, I just… I worry too much." Dan admitted as he saw Finn and Amanda hug.

"Mandy's always gonna be your little sister, you know that'll never change." Carol responded.

Looking outside again, Logan saw that the storm wasn't letting up much and thought back to what his mom said about snowstorms.

 _"They're kind of strange at times… some look peaceful, others look threatening."_

"Sometimes you can't tell which is real…" Logan said quietly.

"Everything okay?" Amanda asked once she and Finn were sitting on the couch again, Logan seeing how tired she looked.

"Yeah, just… old thoughts. You need rest yourself." Logan answered.

Amanda nodded and closed her eyes after she and Finn stretched out on the couch, Finn closing his eyes and Logan looking out the window again.

When the storm had finally let up enough was when Amanda woke up again, in the hotel room at the Fairfield Inn and tucked under the covers… she looked up, smiling when she saw Finn.

"Did they let him out of the hospital yet?" Amanda asked.

"He's in the room across the hall." Finn answered, the two kissing but she saw that look.

"One of them followed us up here, do I even need to ask which one?" Amanda questioned.

Across the hall, Logan yanked the door open and Seth jumped back.

"You've seen a woman around anywhere? 5'1", shoulder length chestnut brown hair, hazel eyes?" Seth asked once he calmed down from the jumpscare.

"Yeah… yeah, I have. And she doesn't need any trouble from people." Logan answered.

"It's okay, he's just too stubborn to back off." Both heard, looked and saw Finn.

"Well… if you've got it handled, I'll step back from the business I know less about. G'day, sir." Logan said, the last part to Seth before as a subtle warning, he made sure to stand at his full height as he left the room.

"Who in the-" Seth started to ask.

"Found him last night after he crashed his plane, he's very lucky to have survived." Amanda answered once she was in her pajamas and had taken her makeup off. "And what happened to your eye?" She asked, noticing that Seth's left eye was bruised.

"I got into a drunken argument with Roman." Seth answered, Amanda fighting the temptation to roll her eyes.

"How many times…" Amanda started to ask, cutting herself off as a dull twinge of pain shot through her left side and Finn helped her sit down. "I'm okay… I just don't tolerate freezing weather like I used to."

"Been around the country and a bit of the world since then, there's more hot places than cold these days." Seth said.

"Most of the time." Amanda says, remembering how she and Seth ended up waking up on a beach in Australia in the middle of summer one year.

At the same time, Logan called into the base.

"Where are you?" Sanders asked, dropping the formalities as he had become a father figure to Logan over the years.

"At a hotel in the rural area of Massachusetts… you don't by chance remember that young girl the med team treated that one day, right?" Logan answered.

"I remember… little spitfire clobbered Evans with a food tray when he tried to draw blood from her arm, then she put him in a damn headlock." Sanders said with a slight chuckle. "Why'd you ask about her?"

"Well… my plane crashed and then I'm back with her again." Logan replied.

"She hasn't hit you, has she?" Sanders asked.

"No, she's mellowed out since those days." Logan answered.

"She's grown up, is why… like you, from a reckless young guy to a wisened, damn good pilot." Sanders said.

"Yeah… last we saw her, she was just a kid, lost some sense of danger when she got heated." Logan replied.

"Everyone does. You stay where you are, this storm's picking up again." Sanders said before they hung up.

In their room after Seth had left, Finn and Amanda were curled up under the blankets and Amanda tried to muffle a cough.

"I've lost my immunity to the damn cold…" Amanda said after Finn pulled her closer to him.

"Like he said, more hot than cold in the world these days. Especially after the time we've spent in the south lately." Finn said quietly as his mouth was near to her ear, after which he planted a kiss on her left shoulder.

"Yep… hopefully when we head to Europe, we'll be better prepared." Amanda said, struggling slightly to get some deep breaths into her lungs and that was when Finn started to worry.

"Hey… come on, relax up…" Finn said, lightly rubbing his hand around her chest.

Amanda closed her eyes, managing to calm down and the phone rang, Finn picking it up.

"Just checking in, is everyone okay?" John asked.

"I think we were out in the cold too long last night, Mandy's having trouble catching her breath." Finn answered, John nearly dropping his phone.

Hearing that, Logan exited his room and knocked on the door… when Finn opened it, Logan rushed in and checked on Amanda, who looked up at him after she was helped up and her eyes opened.

"Were there any kind of recent injuries to that area?" Logan asked.

"Got shoved into the ropes during my match last week, didn't think much of it… they stopped taping up the ribcage, trying to prevent infection." Amanda answered, Logan seeing some bruises on her left side after pulling her shirt up halfway.

"Yeah… bruises don't just appear once the injury happens, they expand afterwards." Logan said, lowering her shirt again.

"Yeah, it hurts for days, even weeks after…" Amanda said before feeling a heating pad being placed onto her side.

"Don't turn it on too high, alright?!" John asked once on speaker, Finn setting the heat on low as Logan walked into the hallway and saw Seth.

"What happened?" Seth asked.

"Just an injury acting up… I'm not one to ask but has anyone in the company been sick lately?" Logan questioned.

"Charlotte was sick during the Hell In A Cell pay per view… was Mandy coughing when you found her?" Seth answered, asking the last part.

"For a few seconds…" Logan said before both checked on them, seeing that Amanda was breathing without any more trouble. "I'm just wondering… if as a result of the injury she's got a form of asthma. I've seen it before, someone I knew got asthma real bad after they fell back-first off of a truck."

"Could've happened… I don't get it though, Dana and I practiced that match for days with no incidents even to where she shoved me into the ropes like she was scripted to." Amanda said.

"Yeah, over and over again. Let me show you this." Logan said, before getting a small scrap of paper out of his pocket and getting Amanda to hold it between her hands, before he grabbed a small paperclip that was on the window edge, unfolded it and quickly swiped the end across the paper, leaving a small trail in it. "Now that's the rope thing happening once, and the paper is you. That's the first practice. Then the second." He said before swiping the clip again, the trail becoming a deeper one. The third made it deeper still, and then the fourth through sixth progressively turned it into an elongated hole through the paper. "Get the idea?"

"Practiced too much…" Amanda said after Logan set the paper and paperclip down.

"Yeah… almost like the health bar on a video game, you could say. Get hit once and it'll go down say, 8 points, no big deal. But then another hit takes it another 8 down, and further and further until you're scrambling for the tiniest health pack or something as your bar is glowing red." Logan said.

"Hard to get out of that mindset at times… I had to take some time off about a few years ago. What I thought was just exhaustion led to a migraine and…" Amanda said, trailing off but Logan knew from the slight tremble in her left hand.

"Seizures… so I think you'll be quite attentive when I say that it's time for another break. We have them just the same in the forces and we always say amongst ourselves that the more you get knocked around, the more your resistance gets knocked down, and the less you can handle being thrown at you… until you're picking up a feather in the woods and get hit as hard as you once would've been by a bullet." Logan said.

Amanda nodded and decided that she needed to be checked out by a doctor…

 _ **A few days later...**_

While it wasn't asthma, Amanda had picked up a respiratory infection but was feeling better thanks to the antibiotics.

She, Finn, Logan and Seth were in the arena for Raw when Amanda heard the angry footsteps of SmackDown diva Alexa Bliss and remembered that their match had to be scrapped.

"Shane's idea, not mine." Amanda said, the blonde and red haired diva still angry.

"I mean, let's be honest here, you ain't angry about the match being scrapped at all. You're angry because now you don't get to throw punches at Mandy here and not get in trouble for it." Logan said after turning around towards the two, sat on one of the benches.

"That's gonna take some getting used to." Amanda responded but Alexa was startled at his imposing frame.

"Hell yeah it is." Logan said before standing up. "You're that desperate to hit someone? There ain't no one authoritative around, give it your best shot."

Alexa backtracked her way back to her locker room, Amanda fighting a smile.

"I ain't seen her that scared." Amanda said as she finished the peppermint tea which Logan realised that she drank to ease any kind of infection that attacked the lungs.

"Feeling okay?" Logan asked.

"Just the occasional cough, not how bad I was the first day." Amanda answered.

"Gonna take some time before it's gone." Logan said, Amanda heading into the locker room to lie down.


End file.
